Canal Defence Light (CDL)

History of Channel Defense Lights (CDL)

The British War Office embraced the idea of ??using powerful searchlights to blind enemy combatants and illuminate the battlefield as early as 1937. Design studies and practical trials followed, leading to the production of a special tank turret with a powerful searchlight in 1939.

With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, the second attack on Europe of World War II, the development of the system became more determinedly pursued by those who would later become the Canal Defense Light system.

The British Army's Matilda II infantry tank was selected as the first recipient of the concept. The standard turret - along with its main armament - was completely removed and the CDL turret was installed in its place.

Due to the installation of this turret, other internal modifications were forced, but the general shape of the Matilda tank was preserved. The searchlight assembly is located behind a manually operated shutter.

With a quick "on-off" action, the bright light should disorient distant enemies while friendly tanks get close to them for a kill.

From this work came an order for three hundred of these turrets to be fitted to existing British Army armoured hulls. The first large-scale product was the Matilda II, which gave rise to the name "Matilda CDL". The vehicles arrived too late to be used in the North African campaign, so attention turned to the use of the newly discovered "weapon" in the planned D-Day landings in northern France.

By then, the Matilda was an aging, poorly equipped tank, so the turret was placed on an American M3 Grant medium tank, which then entered service with the British Army - hence the name "Grant CDL" was born.

Even in this guise, the concept of the CDL was never used as intended, despite the crucial nature of the D-Day landings in the reconquest of Europe. During major river crossings in early 1945, the CDL was only used to illuminate night operations, but never forced waiting enemies as expected.

They also act as searchlights, taking up only a little of the rest of the post-invasion operations.

For a while, the Americans believed in the CDL concept and ordered themselves 355 turrets with searchlights. These were installed on the outgoing M3 Lee medium tank to earn the "T10 Shop Tractor" designation (a designation intended to hide the vehicle's true role on the battlefield).

Like the British design, the T10 didn't work as intended during its last foray into Berlin (and Tokyo, for that matter), and the concept ended up in the annals of history for all interested.

The "T52" was a brief American attempt to convert the M4 Sherman tank into CDL form in 1944. This failed because a Sherman with a regular searchlight could easily fill the role of a professional CDL at a lower cost and with little switching work.

Specification

Basic

Roles

Dimensions

Performance

Performance

for everyone else in our database)

Armor

Not available.

Changes